


Dreamer

by tinsnip



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon Cardassia, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-02
Updated: 2013-12-02
Packaged: 2018-01-03 05:32:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1066347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinsnip/pseuds/tinsnip
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The room is quiet.<br/>He stands at the window, looking out. His hands rest on the windowsill. Its stone is cool beneath his palms.<br/>His city is still there, and he can’t quite believe it.</p><p>* * *</p><p>Elim Garak has dreamed for so long of returning to Cardassia. Now that he's back, he finds that dreaming is a hard habit to break.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dreamer

The room is quiet.

He stands at the window, looking out. His hands rest on the windowsill. Its stone is cool beneath his palms.

His city is still there, and he can’t quite believe it.

Often, when he awakens from sleep, he is certain that this is the dream. There is no way, after all, that he can have found his way back to this place. He spent enough time in exile to understand that it was his new reality, to know that truth at a bones-deep level.

And yet… here he is.

When he awakens, and the world has that tenuous, touch-at-your-peril feeling, he treads lightly. He unravels himself from the bedsheets. He slides out of bed, the floor warm on his feet, too smooth to be quite real. He steps cautiously, lightly to the window, hiding himself away, withdrawing his presence as much as possible. If he makes too much noise, if he is too much _here,_ something might notice, and the dream might end…

But always the city is there, waiting for him. Always the small houses, with lights in their windows and green in their gardens. Always the train station, clanging its presence. Always the buildings, swaying up in proud curves. Always the air, thick with heat. Always the night sky, constellations flickering their inscrutable message. He stands and watches all of it, and doesn’t dare to breathe.

Behind him, in the bed, someone breathes without any worry at all, unaware that the world is dreaming. They’re wrapped in sheets, warm and soft. Those sheets wait for him, as does the someone, as does the bed. In this strange, soap-bubble reality, that bed is always true.

Tethered by its presence, he’s free to let himself drift, to expand himself out into the city, into the night.

Sometimes it’s busy, streets filled with people hurrying to and fro; sometimes the streets are quiet, and only he witnesses their silent meditation.

Sometimes the flowers are blooming on the trees, and on those nights the air is sweet and he leans out the window. Sometimes, when the wind has gathered the dust, the air is too harsh to breathe, and the window stays closed.

Always, the city is beautiful.

It is, truly, too pretty to be real. He sometimes feels that he should avert his eyes, that looking too hard or too hungrily would be inappropriate. It verges on unfaithfulness, and although he’s certain the person in the bed wouldn’t mind, still… one must have standards.

But the city does dress herself so prettily for him… and he has always been an admirer of a well-tailored garment.

He looks out at her, and she is always new, always impossible.

Perhaps one day he’ll wake in the night, and he’ll be back in the realm of the possible. Perhaps he’ll be back in exile, too cold, too bright, unending, grinding. Or even worse: he’ll be _here,_ but everything will be dull and habitual—same old person in the same old place, fallen into routines without knowing it, and no room left for dreams.

Neither of those things has happened yet, though. And if something hasn’t happened yet, well, it doesn’t bear thinking about, does it?

Hands on the windowsill, he dreams his city, and the world he spins is a new reality, built of equal parts truth and lies… and who is to say that one is not as valid as the other?

He laughs to himself, too softly for anyone else to hear, and bows to the city. Whether or not she’s there in the morning, she is lovely for him at night. It would be rude to ask anything more.

There is always the bed, after all, and the person who drowsily murmurs his name as he slides back beneath the sheets.

“…all right, Elim?”

“Mmm. Only dreaming. Go back to sleep.”

“…mmm…”

And perhaps, if the universe smiles, when he awakens he will still remember the dream.


End file.
